We don’t need pall bearers the way we use to. Cremation is up, space is out and Gladys Divers just up and donated her body to science (see the story in the CD “The Last Laugh”). But we sure do need to figure this death thing out.

I grew up on speaking terms with death. Southerners do that. We talk to the dead, about the dead with the dead. The dividing line between one side of the grass and the other was a little murky in Virginia and I am beginning to understand why daddy spent so much time at the funeral home. There was one year he carried so many friends to the grave that we thought he should get on the pay roll down at the funeral home.

Now I know why.

I know because I am now about that age. The age when the parents slip away and there are more and more RIPs at the high school reunion. And this cancer thing, ouch. Who hasn’t lost a sibling, a friend, a neighbor to cancer?
Have we learned anything about the inevitable? Have we gotten better at facing it, talking about it, memorializing it?

I’m not sure. We fear death. Even cousin Jeannine who had the greatest faith in the whole world and was perfect positive that a heavenly choir was waiting on the other side, was angry scared, angry. She had grandchildren to love, graduations to attend, weddings to plan. But the colon cancer got her and all those things happened without her. Life does keep rolling along. Daddy assured me it would and he was right.

My friend Kyle just succumbed to appendix cancer. Have you ever heard of that one? I hope you never do. I’ve known Kyle since he was five years old and I worked for his parent’s theatre. Kyle really believed he’d figure out a way, some route around the cancer or at least a way to postpone it till his daughter reached her teens, but there was no way around it. We videotaped the memorial so his daughter can have it.

The last year of my father’s life, he spent preparing us for his passing. He always called on Sundays and one such Sunday he said straight faced, “its terminal honey.”

“What daddy, what’s terminal?” I rushed to ask. He kind of chuckled and answered “Life honey, it just doesn’t go on forever.”

Guess each one of us has to accept that. And whether it’s cremation or donating our body to science, sooner rather than later, it is over. And that’s about the most any of us have figured out so far.

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Time makes a memory and memory makes a quilt. Our little squares of brilliant orange or twilight blue nestle next to each other tell our stories and keep us alive.

I stitched up a few more squares at the Centrum Festival of American Fiddle Tunes this year. Eliza, my childhood friend of 50 years and Worth, who grew up on the same block with me in Roanoke were both in the Northwest.

We were raised on fiddle festivals a la Galax, Virginia and later Liza’s Floyd home. We were raised on fiddle tunes and banjos and stories and summer afternoons designed for memories. So when our pal Margie said she was playing and come on up, we did just what we would have done a half century ago, we went.

Worth and I picked up Liza in Poulsbo then snaked through Port Gamble. If you’ve never been in that quaint little Mill Town, make it a stop on your next trip to the Olympic National Forrest. And drive the speed limit or else you’ll have the piper to pay.

Worth is builder back in Virginia and he was ready to investigate the construction of the turn of the century wooden buildings. We didn’t let him. Fiddles were waiting for us. Banjos and mandolins called us across the Hood Canal Bridge, past the stands of cherries for sale and into Port Townsend.

I forget that on sunny Saturdays places like Port Townsend are packed with tourisst. Dozens and dozens of shoppers crowded the Victorian Streets and slowed us to a snail’s pace. I was so busy watching pedestrians that I missed the sign to Fort Warden and had to creep along the Puget Sound into the refurbished military base.

We had no idea where we were going. Being lost made us laugh the way it always had.  Worth stretched his long legs out in the back seat and smiled as Liza and I navigated through barracks and back roads. A mama deer and her fawn stopped us for a while and we marveled at how tame deer have become through the years.

I looked for signs and Liza looked for fiddle players. Much to her chagrin, I did not turn at the cider tasting and continued toward the beach.
“That was a mistake,” Liza said, “good cider is hard to come by.”

By the time we had rambled down every wrong path, we finally stopped the car to listen. Not a fiddle in the wind. Liza asked a camper who sent us in the wrong direction.

“There’s the deer,” Worth said.

“Where’s the cider?” Liza asked

Mama and fawn looked up from a red berry bush like a marker. When we stopped to watch, Liza heard the music and we just followed it to the big meadow filled with melodies.

And there we were stretched out in the sun, chewing blades of grass, telling stories about our grandparents and great grandparents and listening to the Irish melodies, West Virginia picking and the National Endowement of the Arts six Heritage Fellowship winners. Margie appeared with her banjo slung over her back and a little weary from a week of camping, taking classes, picking into the wee hours. She dropped to the grass and used Liza’s leg for a pillow.

I sat behind Worth to shade his head from the sun. He has a little less hair now but loves the music more than ever.

And there we lay. Like patches on a quilt, camping on the earth, saving ourselves with memories while the music played on.

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Let’s talk about music. There is a story in music. I think the first story I ever heard was in the music that played on mama’s little white radio or those ten-inch 78rpms. I can still remember the story in Frankie Lane’s “Wild Goose” or Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz.”  Della Reese and Billie Holiday sure could tell a story like Bill Bailey you better get on home.

Television arrived with even more musical stories. In Roanoke, VA. It began with a lot of country. I thought everyone but my mother watched Flatt and Scruggs but our church organist in Seattle defines hell as being locked into a Flatt and Scruggs concert. Hard to imagine anyone could dislike bluegrass so much though Mama would probably agree.

When I was really little and the new broadcast companies were desperate for programming. I discovered singing and acting stories. It was on Saturday afternoons and I couldn’t much understand the words but I sure was entertained by the antics on that black and white little TV.

First there was a story about three ladies who give silver bells and a flute to some guy for safe keeping and all manner of stuff goes wrong in the spirit world. Then there was this girl who pretended to be a boy to find out what her lover was really up to and a princess who was enslaved by the Egyptian pharaoh. Those would be the rudimentary plots of “The Magic Flute,” “Figaro,” and “Aida.”

My brothers teased me something awful about sitting in the house on a Saturday afternoon watching opera. I didn’t care what it was called I just knew there were these great stories being sung and I wanted to know more about them. Opera wasn’t as popular in Roanoke as Flatt and Scruggs or Patsy Cline or the Hit Parade. If country is your style, try this site, you might like  http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/.

Well, that’s how my musical confusion began but the truth is, it never ended. My Android has several stations programmed so I can hear folk, old timey, and some station that plays strange rock and roll. And as for the opera, The Texaco Company’s original agreement provided for just one year of opera broadcasts but its sponsorship, astoundingly, would continue on radio until 2004.

I spent many a Saturday afternoon, driving to the grocery, a soccer game, or cleaning the house, listening to those amazing singers hit the highs and lows of goblins, kings and star crossed lovers. When that was done, I’d be just as happy to hear Bill Haley or Patsy Montana or Donna Fargo. You can now add Blue Scholars or Big World Break to my likes.

I’ve been teased for my bezerk musical taste. But it’s one reason I volunteer out at KBCS. Your community radio station may be a little eclectic too. I hope so. If not, try mine, KBCS.FM or KSER.FM or my old hometown station WVTF.FM streaming live around the world. I think the music stories bind us together.   We’ve come a long way  and now we can tune in anywhere and anytime. The stories are old but the technology, well isn’t it just something? What are you listening too?

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I’m doing a blog. Does the world need another blog? One about stories? I wonder.  Why am I writing a blog? Because everyone asks, “where’s your blog?” So, I figured I’d better do one.

“If everyone told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?” my mother might ask.  “No I wouldn’t do that, but a blog is not the same thing,” I’d tell her and she’d shake her head and say something like ‘will wonders never cease.’

Well what is a blog? According to the modern font of knowledge, Wikipedia:

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order.

The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”.  There is a place for you to respond and add your own thoughts. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C. politics.

Not to worry, I won’t be writing about politics, well not the D.C. variety anyway. I will write about all things story, including where you can hear them, how you can write them to how you can download a tale or post your own.

I’ll write about food because it oozes through my southern veins like kudzu on steroids.

Music gets airtime because next to food, it’s my favorite thing in life.  If you enjoy folk try this site www.folkalley.com. For jazz on line go here: www.wbgo.org/.

Well, there will also be some comments about the garden art, kids, and pets and how do you decide between an Android and an iPhone

And I’ll write about organizations. You know I just spent so many years consulting to companies that the story of how business works, how people and systems interact for customer satisfaction still fascinates me. Even in a downturned economy organizations are still churning out services, products with passion and pride. It’s a miracle that so many of us, from our different walks of life and skills ever manage to collaborate. But we do. And since we live in a community not an economy, growing grassroots organizations matter. Nobody knows this better than the GenX, GenY, millennials and all the teachers who just saw their paychecks cut.

And I’ll tell you about other blogs and places that might be of interests. Like Iaan Hughes’ log of life, No Depression’s music blog, Elizabeth Camera’s effortless humor that underpins her blog that you can find by going to www.evbeff.blogspot.com.

I’ll keep you up to date on what the cousins are dong in Windy Gap, how Uncle Zoot’s banjo camp turns out and if nephew got caught buck naked in the rose garden or if he escaped and how the new radio show, Rain City Tales and Tunes, is coming along. If you have any storytellers or musicians you want to hear, do let me know.

With everyone in my constellation retiring I’m almost shamefaced to say I’m launching my umpteenth career.  It’s like in the early days of consulting, anyone could do it. You just printed a business card with consultant written under your name. Now I’m a blogger. Will wonders never cease? No, mama, I don’t think they do.

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